Party Games by R.L. Stine

Her friends warn her not to go to Brendan Fear’s birthday party at his family’s estate on mysterious Fear Island. But Rachel Martin has a crush on Brendan and is excited to be invited. Brendan has a lot of party games planned. But one game no one planned intrudes on his party—the game of murder. As the guests start dying one by one, Rachel realizes to her horror that she and the other teenagers are trapped on the tiny island with someone who may want to kill them all. How to escape this deadly game? Rachel doesn’t know whom she can trust. She should have realized that nothing is as it seems… on Fear Island.

R.L. Stine makes his triumphant return to Shadyside, a town of nightmares, shadows, and genuine terror, and to the bestselling series that began his career writing horror for the juvenile market, in the new Fear Street book Party Games. – Goodreads.com

When my boys were younger, we read more than a few of the Goosebumps books together. When my youngest son (definitely not a horror fan now that he’s older), was in middle school, he still asked me to read one of the ‘scary’ parts to him because he didn’t want to read it alone.

R.L. Stine books haven’t been in our house for several years, so I was excited to have an opportunity to read his newest book. Party Games is in the Fear Street series and even though I hadn’t read other books in this series, it’s easily a stand alone. This was a quick, suspenseful, and fast-paced read. It started off with a great setup – teens alone on an island, no cell phone reception, no way off the island – then people start dying. It had a good mix of characters, with a mystery, some spooky moments and surprises along the way.

This book is listed as YA, but the writing style, predictable twists, chapter ending cliffhangers, and junior high-ish romance place it squarely in the MG category. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think older YA readers would lose interest fairly quickly, unless reading for nostalgic reasons.

Party Games is scheduled for publication September 30, 2014 and would be a wonderful Halloween read for the younger spectrum of the YA crowd.

This review is based on a digital ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.

On several Goodreads reviews, I noticed people saying the same thing – they’d enjoyed them when younger and read the newest one for nostalgia’s sake. I didn’t know Fear Street was a series when I started this book, but it was a fun read.